1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to relay apparatuses that can be installed in Internet facsimile equipment which transmits/receives image information using E-mail over the Internet, and their relay method.
1. Description of the Related Art
Facsimile apparatuses which transmit image information over the Internet using the same operations as in general facsimile equipment have been developed. Since these apparatuses use the Internet for the entire or part of their communication path, this type of facsimile apparatus is called "Internet facsimile."
By placing the Internet facsimile at two Internet ends and using the relay function of the Internet facsimile, it is possible to achieve cost reduction taking advantage of the Internet independent of differences in distance. For example, E-mail data is sent to the nearest Internet facsimile of the G3FAX as the destination via the Internet and from the Internet facsimile it is transmitted to the destination G3FAX via a public line.
When using the Internet facsimile as such a relay apparatus, the owner of the relay apparatus pays the communication expenses up to the destination facsimile. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the use of the Internet facsimile relay function without permission.
Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 9-116728 is disclosed that the password corresponding to a relay apparatus will be searched from the relay apparatus list and encrypted and then E-mail with the encrypted password added will be sent, and the encrypted password added to the received E-mail is decrypted and if it matches the password that the owner registered beforehand, the relay will be permitted.
However, the above relay system requires all apparatuses using a relay apparatus to be equipped with a mechanism to search the password of the relay apparatus and a mechanism to encrypt the searched password. As apparatuses without the password search mechanism and encryption mechanism cannot use the relay apparatus, such a system has a demerit that this system is available to only a limited number of users.